US aid to Ukraine may hit a road block if Congress spending bill logjam continues

Ukraine may soon find the aid channel from the US dried out if Congress doesn’t pass a new spending bill in time. The US is headed to a government shutdown as Congress struggles to pass a new spending bill with the 30 September deadline closing in. The lawmakers continue debating a stop-gap budget bill with $25 billion in assistance to Kyiv. “We’ve got a little bit more funding to go, so I think we’ll be ok for the next few weeks or so. But without the supplemental request that we asked for, it will absolutely have an effect on our ability to support Ukraine well into the fall and into the winter months,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a CNN interview. “Not getting that supplemental request if there’s a shutdown – that’s gonna have a significant impact on their ability to succeed on the battlefield.” The spending bill logjam was also caused by the differences over additional aid to Ukraine, according to the New York Times. Lawmakers told the Times that Republicans rejected a proposal for another tranche of aid worth $25 billion. “Despite broad bipartisan support in the Senate for money for Ukraine, officials said, some Republicans were arguing that it would present an added complication in trying to provide [House] Speaker Kevin McCarthy with a way out of the spending logjam,” the Times reported. While officials have warned that the US coffers were running dry, the Defence Department said that the budget woes would have no effect on US aid to Ukraine. The US military had designated the aid as “essential” deeming it “an excepted activity under a government lapse in appropriations,” Pentagon spokesperson Chris Sherwood said. However, Sherwood said the opposite just a few days ago. The US has thus far committed over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war started in February 2022. However, there has been growing Republican scepticism about funding Ukraine. Before becoming the House Speaker in January this year, Kevin McCarthy had warned that Republicans would not write a “blank check” for Ukraine when they get back the majority. Republicans secured a narrow majority in the US House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm election.